Fulfillment of electronic commerce (e-commerce) purchases often involves obtaining an item packaged for retail, putting the packaged item in a corrugate box (an over-box) with packing material, attaching an adhesive shipping label to the corrugate box, and then providing the labeled box to a carrier for shipment to a customer. This continues to be a common order-fulfillment practice. In some cases, e-commerce merchants order over-boxes that are pre-printed with the merchant's logo and branding to build their brand and customer awareness.
Customers expect their shipped purchases to arrive protected in an appropriate amount of sustainable and easy-to-open packaging, which is typically accomplished using corrugate, a brown cardboard box, as an over-box. Customers making purchases in physical retail stores are accustomed to retail packaging, which has a key role in positioning the product with the customer, fulfilling purchase triggers, and mitigating buyer remorse. As a result, many customers have specific expectations about how their purchased item will be packaged for shipment, and perceptions about the item when it arrives via a shipment and is not packaged in retail packaging. Items that do not arrive in retail packaging can be considered by some customers as being something other than genuine, new items. Other packaging concerns relate to concealment of content in a box to lessen a potential for theft and/or to maintain an element of surprise as to the content of the box.